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1.21k reviews for:
Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
Katherine Howe, Anderson Cooper
3.67 AVERAGE
1.21k reviews for:
Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
Katherine Howe, Anderson Cooper
3.67 AVERAGE
Interesting, especially while also watching The Gilded Age! I did get lost a few times though throughout the book.
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Really enjoyed the inserts from the Vanderbilt book of etiquette between chapters. Perhaps I’m more engaged because I’m in the middle of the gilded age HBO series but cooper lays out the family history very well, including a lot of detailed description without overdoing it.
informative
medium-paced
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Slow with many details that I didn’t need or care to know. Seemed like chapters that went on and on about things like the Lusitania and Truman Capote were added to give the book more pages. The whole book left me feeling exhausted and disgusted by the ultra rich.
I listened to this as an audiobook. While I knew the stories of some of the Vanderbilts catalogue in this novel, it was interesting to see the family history over the years through the lens of one specific Vanderbilt from a set of years. And hearing about the lives of the Vanderbilts I didn’t know about before was so interesting. I enjoyed the personal connection Anderson Cooper brought to the later years of the Vanderbilt family - the stories and details he revealed about his mother, who he gives the title of “The Last Vanderbilt”, was touching and made me look forward to the end of the novel for her story alone. This novel felt like a mix between a memoir for his mother and the Vanderbilt legacy and a more casual discussion about the far distant relatives and the idea of the Vanderbilts as imagined by society.
medium-paced